Mobile telephone ownership rate Metadata

People who own a mobile telephone

Mobile telephone ownership rate

TelephoneMobileOwnership

The proportion of individuals who own a mobile telephone. An individual owns a mobile cellular phone if the individual has a mobile cellular phone device with at least one active SIM card for personal use.

This data series includes mobile phones supplied by employers that can be used for personal reasons and mobile phones for personal use that are not registered under the respondent name. It excludes people who have only active SIM cards and no mobile phone device. An active SIM card is one used in the last 3 months.

Source: United Nations Statistics Division. (2024). Metadata for Sustainable Development Goal indicator 5.b.1: Proportion of individuals who own a mobile telephone, by sex. https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-05-0B-01.pdf (Accessed 29 July 2026).

This data series measures individual ownership of a mobile telephone. It identifies mobile phone ownership as an important measure of gender equality because a personally owned, rather than shared, device can provide women with greater independence and autonomy, including in their professional lives. In forced displacement contexts, individual mobile phone ownership can also facilitate access to timely information, services and livelihood opportunities, while enabling people to maintain contact with family members and support networks. The series can help identify inequalities in access to personal communication technology among refugees, internally displaced persons and stateless people, including gender disparities. Its interpretation should be based on individual ownership rather than household ownership or shared access.

Numerator: number of in-scope individuals who own a mobile telephone.
Denominator: total number of in-scope individuals with valid information.

Calculation: divide the numerator by the denominator and multiply the result by 100.

International definition and standards

The series measures individual ownership of a mobile telephone, not household access, mobile network coverage, affordability, quality of service or frequency of use.

Quality assurance follows the practices of the standardised survey series or data source from which the data is collected.